Shelby

If you've read my bio, you know that Shelby is our Golden Retriever, and she really enjoys romping around our mountain ranch.

Shelby was a rescue dog, and we adopted her at about one and a half years of age with a litany of issues that others weren't willing to deal with. For example, she's an escape artist who can open kennels and leap over a six-foot fence with no respect whatsoever for why someone put it there in the first place. Fortunately, we have 70 unfenced acres up here backed up to wilderness land, so we just let her run around to her heart's content, and she always comes back. No problem there.

The main reason she comes back is because she is emotionally incapable of living without me for any extended period of time. She is clearly MY dog, which became immediately apparent when she walked right up to me at the rescue place and started licking my face - something she had reportedly never done before. In fact, she is so desperate to be near me at all times that it is often challenging to go to the bathroom or take a shower, but I'm quite firm about protecting my privacy these days, especially after she lunged for my equipment the one and only time I actually let her see me naked. Thankfully, I was able to shield myself in time. Whew!

But her general attitude was the thing that got me at first - or more specifically, her audacious belief that anything you told her to do was just a "suggestion". She thought it was well within her right to veto anything we said and go on with whatever interested her more, like looking out the window or lying on the floor. When we called her, she would just look at us in an aloof manner, and you could see the wheels turning in her head as she mulled over her options. Fortunately, we have just about cured her of all that, but it took a clicker, 200 pounds of doggie treats, and capitalizing on the quintessential Golden Retriever's desire to please. I just don't understand why we have to get so animated about being displeased. It's like a Shakespeare tragedy around here sometimes.

Shelby's number one "job" when she leaves the house is to check the chipmunk traps (see my earlier blog about our leading-edge chipmunk relocation program). If one of them is full, she will start barking like crazy and nose the trap around while the poor chipmunk inside holds on for dear life. That's my queue to run outside and move the trap to the bed of our ranch truck while Shelby tries to tackle me and the trap to the ground, clearly with a mind toward getting the most out of her entertainment dollar.

Once the critter has been relocated down the mountain, I return with the trap, refill it with peanut butter and put it back out. But Shelby doesn't understand what's going on because she'll bark and paw at the trap for hours if I let her, which inevitably causes the trap door to close, meaning that I have to reset it again and again. She can clearly see the critter is gone, so I can only assume she's ready for another one to appear, apparently out of thin air. How else do they get in there, anyway?

We were also warned by the rescue people that Shelby is a counter-terrorist. And while we have pretty much cured her of that, I DID lose a third of my grilled salmon last night by temporarily setting my plate too close to the edge while I poured myself another glass of Pinot Noir.

We live, we learn.